Facebook's Mumbai office searched by police after the social network fails to share info on a suspect

Update: Facebook India has responded to the story

Facebook’s Mumbai office was recently searched by the Mangaluru police after it failed to get information on a suspect from Facebook. A man from Mangaluru, who is on the run, had allegedly posted derogatory content about Hindu goddesses which went viral.

The profile is in the name of a certain Jabbar BC Road aka Kudroli. According to Mangaluru police, the cops carried out the search operations in the Bandra Kurla complex office of Facebook after getting a search warrant from a Mangaluru court.

According to the investigation officer who spoke to the Times of India , Jabbar had posted demeaning content on Facebook. This content was widely circulated on Facebook and WhatsApp, and even led to communal tensions in Mangaluru.

According to the cops, Facebook refused to co-operate with the authorities. A case was registered under IPC Section 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion) and IPC Section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage feelings of any class by insulting religious beliefs).

Mangaluru police commissioner M Chandra Sekhar said that Facebook was served notice, to provide evidence which was needed to file the chargesheet. “As Facebook’s response was not satisfactory, we had no choice but to take legal recourse,” he said.

In fact, a case has also been registered against Facebook under the IPC Section 176 (omission to give information to public servant by person legally bound to give it) and a search warrant was obtained to search the Facebook office premise.

Facebook has yet to release a statement about this incident. We have reached out to Facebook India for a comment and will update the story when we hear from them.

According a Facebook India spokesperson who spoke to tech2, Facebook India has processes and guidelines for law enforcement agencies to contact and submit requests.

“We respond to valid requests for data by Law enforcement agencies. We take the privacy of people’s information very seriously, and each and every request if checked for legal sufficiency. We are transparent about the requests we receive and the percentage of requests when some data is produced in our Government Request Report ,” said Facebook India.